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Parents' Information

Badshot Lea Village Infant School

Healthy Schools

Badshot Lea Village Infant School is a Healthy School!

Our school was awarded ‘Healthy Schools’ status in the Autumn Term of 2007. Since then our commitment to promoting good health in all that we do has continued. We also put the ethos of ‘Every Child Matters’ at the heart of all our work and play. We have put together some information and photographs to provide interested readers with a flavour of our many achievements.
Please click on the link below to take you to further information about each category.

Personal, Social and Health Education Healthy Eating
Our School Council Christmas Party food
Physical Activity Emotional Health & Wellbeing
Our Trim Trail A Friendship Bench

Healthy Eating

Cookery Club (Click here for a brief slide show. This will open in a new window. Please close the window to return to this page)
This is a club which is run voluntarily by Mrs West and Mrs Morris (two of our outstanding teaching assistants).  Over the course of the year we aim to provide all of our Year 2 children with the opportunity of taking part in this fantastic cooking course for a programme of six one hour sessions after school.  The children enjoy making many delicious and healthy snacks and meals, from fruit salad to shepherd’s pie.  Where possible, ingredients are fresh, local and seasonal. 

Gardening Club (Click here for a brief slide show. This will open in a new window. Please close the window to return to this page)
All children in Year 1 are given the opportunity of taking part in a course of six one hour gardening sessions after school. The children enjoy planting and growing various items, including vegetables and herbs. We have regular winning entries in local growing competitions for schools, including ‘Best Hanging Baskets’, ‘Tallest Sunflowers’ and ‘Biggest Pumpkins’. We have also earned our ‘School Environmental Gold Award’ in association with Farnham in Bloom and this year we are entering the ‘South and Southeast in Bloom’ competition for the first time. The children certainly learn a great deal about planting and growing but most importantly they take away with them an enthusiasm for gardening and growing their own produce. Our thanks go to Mrs. Mansfield and Mrs. West for their fantastic efforts in running this club voluntarily after school.

Fruit and Vegetable Scheme (Click here for a brief slide show. This will open in a new window. Please close the window to return to this page)
The school takes part in the Surrey fruit and vegetable scheme, where children are provided with fresh fruit or vegetables as a snack at morning play. This is very popular with the children and is certainly providing them with an extra portion of fruit or vegetables each day.

Christmas party food (Click here for a brief slide show. This will open in a new window. Please close the window to return to this page)
This is an annual festive treat when all classes in the school sit together in party clothes and hats and share a wonderful range of food before enjoying their party games.  The food is cleverly organised so that each class provides a different type of food, such as sandwiches, cakes, fruit and vegetables or savoury snacks.  This ensures a balance between healthy foods and treats.  Many parents spend a great deal of time producing lovely home baked treats and the beautifully arranged fresh fruit and vegetables look and taste fantastic!

School meals (Click here for a brief slide show. This will open in a new window. Please close the window to return to this page)
Our catering service provides healthy, balanced meals with fresh fruit and vegetables and fresh baked bread each day.  We provide regular information for parents about our school meals as well as tasting opportunities; menus are sent home each term, the cook brings her fresh baked biscuits and bread to our new parents meetings, and the children can opt to have a ‘one off’ lunch on our special ‘Healthy Heart’ promotion days in school.  Currently around half of our children have school lunches and this has risen from around one quarter; 66% of our children enjoyed the last ‘Healthy Heart’ lunch.  Of course the strongest influencing factor is that the meals are lovely and the children really do enjoy their school lunches; roast dinner each Wednesday is a particular favourite.

Food Awareness Week
Once a year we enjoy ‘Food Awareness Week’. The children take part in many exciting and educational activities all centred around the theme of healthy eating. Our favourite activities include the following:
• Café Lea: This is a healthy café serving pizzas and smoothies where children are the chefs, waiters/waitresses and customers.
• The children design their own laminated A3 placemat, promoting a healthy balance, which they can take home.
• The children make their own fruit kebabs.
• A visit from Waitrose: Staff from Waitrose bring a wonderful display of fresh fruit and vegetables, arranged according to their colour. They explain the nutritional value of each colour group and give samples of unusual fruits for the children to taste. It is a very interesting and educational experience for all!

Free fresh water for all (Click here for a brief slide show. This will open in a new window. Please close the window to return to this page)
During the summer term of 2007, the Friends of Badshot Lea Village Infant School provided all children with a free water bottle.  Since then, each new intake of children in Year R are provided with their first school water bottle, kindly paid for by the Friends.  Parents are encouraged to purchase replacement lids from the school office at a cost of 50 pence, or alternatively a new bottle costs £1.50.  The children bring their water bottles to school each day.  They are kept inside the classrooms so that the children are able to drink water through the day as and when they need to.  We also plan to install a new drinking fountain in the playground.

Cake stall (Click here for a brief slide show. This will open in a new window. Please close the window to return to this page)
The Friends of Badshot Lea run various functions during the year and we always have a stall where people can buy food and drink.  Since achieving Healthy Schools Status we have made sure that we always offer healthy options as well as cakes and biscuits.  Our ‘fruit cups’ always prove to be very popular with the children.

Physical Activity

Developing our School Grounds (Click here for a brief slide show. This will open in a new window. Please close the window to return to this page)
An enthusiastic and hard working team of parents and staff have spent two long evenings after school tidying and improving our school grounds. Their efforts were rewarded by a feast of barbeque food. We are lucky to have such beautiful and extensive school grounds, ideal for promoting physical activity and imaginative play.

Our New All Weather Path (Click here for a brief slide show. This will open in a new window. Please close the window to return to this page)
We are very proud of our new all weather path around the school field.  This links the playground areas with the new pedestrian gate and allows children to enjoy all year round access to all our wonderful play areas, also extending their learning opportunities.

The  Trim Trail (Click here for a brief slide show. This will open in a new window. Please close the window to return to this page)
The children love climbing on our fantastic trim trail.  Each class group looks forward to their turn once a week and the children benefit enormously from the physical activity and challenges it promotes.

Active Play (Click here for a brief slide show. This will open in a new window. Please close the window to return to this page)
Our children do not need to be encouraged to be active, given the right space and opportunities they just make the most of our wonderful range of play equipment during their playtimes and lunchtimes.

Soft Play and Sensory Area
The children are very lucky to have this beautiful new indoor soft play area. All children enjoy access to this fabulous resource, but children in the school’s special needs unit benefit particularly from the physical stimulation this equipment provides.

Display of local clubs and activities Click here to see our directory
Each year we write to all our parents inviting them to recommend local clubs and activities that their children enjoy.  This information is compiled to up-date this page on our website; our own local directory of clubs and activities for children, recommended by parents and children at our school.  The benefits of children doing physical activities out of school are numerous, and the extra activity contributes towards each child’s recommended 60 minutes of physical activity each day.  This information is particularly useful to families that are new to the area.

Waverley and Ash School Sports Partnership
Our school is part of a group of local schools who get together regularly for sports activities and competitions.  This involvement in extra-curricular sports has enabled us to achieve our ‘Activemark’ award for 2007 and 2008.  Children from years 1 and 2 regularly visit All Hallows School for a number of different and enjoyable sports activities.  These include biathlon competitions, rounders tournaments and sports coaching events for gifted and talented children. 

Sports Day (Click here for a brief slide show. This will open in a new window. Please close the window to return to this page)
This is an occasion we look forward to every year.  It is held on a Saturday and is combined with our summer garden party.  We are particularly proud of our new format where the children are organised into mixed age teams and they compete against other teams in a circuit of novelty races.  Points are awarded at the end of every race and there is a winning team at the end.  The children dress up according to a theme for their team and parents are able to follow their children as they move around the circuit.  All children are involved and active during every timed race and the spectacle is a feast for the eyes of every proud parent.

Achievement Board
We have a display board in the school hall where achievements in physical activity are celebrated.  There are certificates and photographs of children for achievements in swimming, football and many more activities.  The children feel very proud to have their achievements recognised and it encourages other children to take part in physical activities too.

Travel Plan
Our school travel plan is in place and has worked to increase walking to school and improve safety for pedestrians in our locality.  We have a new pedestrian gate providing a safe entry onto the school site for our walking bus and we have extended the zigzag lines outside the school entrance which keeps parked vehicles further away from this area.

Golden Boot Challenge
The school took part in the Golden Boot Challenge, a Surrey County Council Scheme, for four weeks to encourage ‘greener’ modes of travel to school. This was very successful and the Village of Badshot Lea has felt very different both during the Golden Boot Challenge and, importantly, continuing afterwards with far fewer cars parking close to the school in the mornings and afternoons.

Walking Buses & Park and Stride (Click here for a brief slide show. This will open in a new window. Please close the window to return to this page)
During our Golden Boot Challenge in June 2007 we trialled a ‘Walking Bus’ and ‘Park and Stride’  scheme.  These were so successful that they have been operating every day (weather permitting), morning and afternoon, since September 2007.  We run two walking buses, one to Badshot Lea Village Infant School and the other to William Cobbett Junior School.  There are many families with children at both schools and the walking buses enable us to walk our children to both schools safely instead of jumping in our cars in order to drop off and collect all our children on time.  We have analysed our registers and found that during a ‘normal’ week in November (2008) our walking buses saved a total of 156 car journeys.  We feel that this is very worthwhile and we are all certainly benefiting from the extra physical activity walking provides.

Scooter Park (Click here for a brief slide show. This will open in a new window. Please close the window to return to this page)
We have a scooter park, located just inside the school entrance, to enable children to scoot to school, leave their scooter at school during the day and scoot home in the afternoon. This has proved very popular and the children are benefiting from the extra physical activity scooting provides. Many children are enjoying scooting quite long distances to school and parents are happy that they no longer need to carry (or ride) their children’s scooters home again in the morning and back to school in the afternoon each day!
 

Personal, Social and Health Education and Emotional Health & Well Being
 

Personal, Social and Health Education & Emotional Health and Well Being

Star of the Week (Click here for a brief slide show)
Each Friday our children come to school wondering who will be ‘Star of the Week’ this time?  Their teachers choose children from each class who have done particularly well that week and deserve special praise.  In assembly the teachers reveal their chosen Stars of the Week and they are given a special badge to wear.  The younger children also have the privilege of taking home their class toy for the weekend.  Each child is photographed and their special reason for being Star of the Week is recorded in our beautiful Album.  These albums have become treasured mementos and are kept in the headteacher’s office.

School Council (Click here for a brief slide show)
Two children have been chosen to represent each class on our ‘School Council’.   They have either been elected by their peers, through a secret ballot, or in the case of our reception class and special needs unit they were selected by their teachers.  They meet regularly to discuss important matters, and later they report back to their classes.  This process enables the children to voice their ideas and opinions, and influence decisions about aspects of school life that really matter to them, such as playtime activities and choosing new school equipment.

Friendship Benches (Click here for a brief slide show)
We have purchased three lovely benches which are known as our ‘Friendship’ benches.  They have been beautifully carved with pictures of wildlife and placed in our new wonderful ‘sensory garden’.  The children understand that if they feel sad or lonely then they can go and sit on these benches; this will signal to other children that someone needs friendly company, and soon they will be joined by thoughtful and caring friends.

The Christmas Play
Each year we put on three performances of our whole school Christmas play.  The staff and children work extremely hard to make this annual production a magical event for all who watch it or take part in it.  The theme of ‘Every Child Matters’ could not be more apparent as every child in the school, including those in the schools special needs unit, has their moment on the stage.  It is breath-taking to watch as the children and staff orchestrate this amazing event.  You can see in each child’s face their growing confidence and pride in what they are doing and the integration of main-stream and special needs children is seamless.  The positive inclusion of all children is an astonishing achievement and typically there is not a dry eye among the audience watching.

 Written by Juliette Tommons

(Parent Governor and representative from the ‘Healthy Schools Committee’)

 

 


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